Dec. 10, 2012
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by Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY

by Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES - If you're wondering what happened to those Instagram photos you were trying to share on Twitter, you're not alone.

Photo images from the popular photo-sharing service went dark Sunday on Twitter, a decision, Twitter says, that was made by Instagram, which was acquired earlier in the year for $1 billion by Facebook.

"Instagram has disabled photo integration with Twitter," the microblogging site wrote in a status update. "As a result, photos are no longer appearing in tweets or user photo galleries."

Photos can still be shared from Instagram via a direct link on Twitter, but the photo isn't visible in the tweet, "as was previously the case," Twitter noted.

Late Monday, Twitter released a mobile app for iPhone and Android devices that includes a photo filter and other features that were available on Instagram.

Instagram on Monday announced a new version of its popular Apple iOS app and an upgrade for Google's Android devices.

The Instagram social network on iOS and Android devices has 80 million members, most of whom view photos on their devices.

In an appearance last week, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said he wanted folks viewing photos on his service.

"Really it's about where do you go to consume that image, to interact with that image. We want that to be on Instagram," Systrom said at the LeWeb conference in Paris. "What we realized over time is we really needed to have an awesome Web presence."

Online, if you go to the Instagram website, you can't easily view photos. To make that happen, you have to type in the user name in the URL, as in "http://instagram.com/yourname."

Meanwhile, all may not be lost for viewing Instagram photos on Twitter. User Michael Schonfeld tweeted a workaround Sunday, an extension called InstaTwit for Google's Chrome browser that returns photo viewing from Instagram to the tweet.